


In Noctem

by StainedGlassDreams



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Infinity War, F/M, Infinity Stones, Infinity War, Prelude, Wakanda
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-27
Updated: 2017-12-10
Packaged: 2019-02-07 11:56:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12840657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StainedGlassDreams/pseuds/StainedGlassDreams
Summary: A prelude for Avengers: Infinity War, taking place during the events of Black Panther..





	1. Carry My Soul

The train rattles, cold biting from the windows, blowing past an elderly woman, wrapped heartily in rags.  
Across them, is a man, asleep as his figure rocks softly.  
No one has told them, this is their last mission together. His hand makes it's way onto her thigh, and just sets it there.  
She moves her hand onto his, grasping it as Duchess Ghestov.  
They hold onto each other, somehow knowing.

Bucky sighs, throwing aside the towel from the gym onto a nearby towel into a cluttered mess. He's feeling a slight bit of cabin fever, as much as he doesn't want to admit it.  
He picked up the slow moving metallic orb that's floating on the bed. Shuri gave it to him a few nights ago, as if sensing him. It's a small, circular object, which floated approximately 2 inches above any surface, composed of different parts which continued to move into themselves. The parts, made of vibranium, were tubed and interlinked, shifting into itself, and held an anti matter field which when cupped, would spin whichever way the holder willed it to.  
"It only takes one touch to solve it." She teased, before leaving with just a smile.

Since then, Bucky's been picking it back up now and then, softly touching what appeared to be more vulnerable pieces of the orb.  
He touched another part, though it remained tight and slowly chiming with every brush against another vibranium piece; like a lullaby or a church bell.

"You ever want to get married?" A redheaded girl with freckles says, sitting in the pews of a large cathedral.  
"Need to survive this war first."  
He looks up to the cross. A part of his stomach flinches for the 100th time.

His memories have been coming faster and clearer now, ever since he woke up.  
All kill codes, triggers, wiped from the map whole he was under. When he came to, before T'Challa had time to talk to him, he somehow knew it. As if his mind had just been freed from a vice, a breath that had been weighed in his lungs since the fall from the train, gone.  
He doesn't think he'll ever be able to thank him enough.  
He isn't naive enough to believe it all is back, there's parts, pieces blacked out like a classified document, waiting for the right holder to read it. A part of him is glad for it. ...He isn't ready for it, not yet. The feeling is like waking from a fever breaking, that dazed knowledge of fatigue.

"How long have I been out?" Steve asks, attempting to get up out of bed.  
"Two days and you're gonna spend another there, so shut up." Bucky says, as he pushes him back into bed.

The room is filled with a light gray, coming in from the wide windows, combining with the already misty cover from the nearby waterfalls.  
He hasn't been able to talk with T'Challa much since he woke, Suri saying "He's setting his affairs in order for his reign." But the smallest inclination of worry in her emotion when she said it, makes him think otherwise.  
The cabin fever mixes in again with a feeling of ineptitude. He makes a fist with his new arm, another gift from the King. The new vibranium upgrade, complete with a blue star (after he requested), also has a camouflage ability for discreet missions. A small button near the underside of it allows it to give the arm an appearance of what his actual arm might look like. He was so taken aback when they first showed it to him, he didn't know what to make of it. He hasn't used it since, not out of ingratitude, but that he's more comfortable for seeing it as it is. He's never been a bullshitter. And T'Challa knows it, a part of him Thankful again for the placement of the room. It's view obstructs intruders, but gives him a clear view should he need. One of the first things they teach you in army stealth, is to know tells. That you can have the finest equipment but if you don't know when a person is bluffing, the knowledge is useless. And though Bucky has been keeping that facade in tact since he first came to camp, so has T'Challa. A mutual knowledge of being like marble. The sentence turns over in his mind, like the orb he's holding.

The memory is touch. Her hands around his neck as they look into each other eyes.  
She kisses him, and the world quiets.

Bucky stands up, sighing as he walks toward the window, one arm leaning up against it.  
He knows he doesn't have to worry, that there isn't a need to. But he still does.

He stills, before Thanking God silently his mind was right.  
"You're getting rusty." He says to the air behind him.  
A small noise of a duffel being set down on the floor, before a voice comes from behind. "You're too accustomed to the environment, so technically you're cheating."  
He turns and wraps his arms around Natasha, as they kiss and the world still quiets everytime. They pull apart slowly, her hands behind his neck.  
"How'd the mission go?"  
She shakes her head. "False lead." Her fingers play with the small, short hairs at the base of his neck, something she does when she's tense or worried. "...It feels different. I don't know what that means yet."  
"It'll work out. It always does." He says, holding her closer.  
"How do you do that?"  
"What?"  
"Say that, and make it believable. Even for me."  
"You make that possible."  
They kiss once more, before she makes her way toward the bathroom.  
"I need a shower and a 6-pack."  
He looks back out the window once more. "Sounds like a good combination."  
She looks out from the archway. "You've been cooped up here so long, maybe I'll let you help me with both." A smirk at the end of her lips.  
"You're too good to me." He smiles back, making his way toward her.

The orb remains twirling inside itself.  
He hasn't said it, but he's felt it too. There's a strange finality in the air that's been making him uneasy, adding up with the anxiety that's already been pushing up against him. As if the stakes have been raised, more than either of them can ever have guessed.  
It chimes, clanging against itself.  
And for them, it just means every minute means more, is cherished further. It's all either of them can do. And why neither of them say it.


	2. Into the Night

The two walls opposite of the ancient buildings, long since neglected, have seemingly given up on who holds more ancient wisdom and rather, who can accumulate more dirt.  
Who has more grime caked in between the cement grains, a city inside a city of handlaid brick.  
The alleyway was silent, except for the sound of animals coming to watch the silent battle, and steam hissing up from the sewers. And a hooded figure who would have remained hidden if not for the sound of it rolling something in it's pocket. It lifted it's wrist up closer, looking at the time, before muttering quietly. "Where the hell is he.."  
A person emerged from the end of the alleyway, shadow hiding it's face, the hooded figure jumped. "It really is you." He said, seemingly in awe.  
"Do you have it?"  
"Y-yeah. I hope you appreciate what that took to get." He rubbed his arm gingerly. "Damn Greek ninja girl nearly killed me.." The figure handed something to the person in the shadows, as he looked at it. It appeared to be an ancient looking parchment, with a dulled but still prominent gold ribbon along the edgings. He outstretched his other hand as if to give him something, before the hooded figure shook his head. "No, I don't want it. The fact I could actually help Captain America is enough."  
The figure made the slightest of movements, showing the briefest glimpse of blonde. "Thank You."  
"Hey wait."  
The man stopped.  
"So, do they still call you Cap now?"  
"Steve's fine." He politely replied.


	3. May the Stars Light My Way

Bucky woke up more abruptly than he hoped, nightmare still gnawing at his heels; guilt bubbled up as he hoped he didn't wake Nat.  
"Hey." She says, his fear confirmed.  
"Sorry."  
"Stop that." She replies, stretching her arms above her head, sheet falling off of her.  
He sat at the edge of bed, running his hand through his sweat flecked hair. The dream was...strange. Azzano and Siberia were painted alongside each othee in the same shade of black that he's too familiar with, but he remembered something strange inside of it. Something that looked like a map on the wall of Zola's lab, 6 colors appearing in different parts of it.  
"James." Natasha says, her worry tinged voice sounding like it's coming from a mile away.  
He turns to her, her blonde hair inadvertently making his vertigo spike for a brief moment as it still tries to settle, closing his eyes.  
"[Come here.]" She replies softly.  
He makes his way over to her, lying on her thigh as she moves her hand through his hair, kissing his forehead. And just like that, the room stops being a thousand different time zones, settling here, now; amidst her scent and fresh water, coming in from the vents.  
"Weird dream." He says breaking the silence.  
"What about?" She asks, her voice too calming.  
"Zola's." He says, dipping back into sleep, the warmth of her on his skin. "Something on the wall.."

Just as they both had drifted, the phone rang, startling them.  
Bucky reached for it first. "Yeah?" His brow furrowed for a moment, replaced by relief. "Be down."  
"Who was it?" She asks, as Bucky now got up.  
"Steve's back."

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Steve was in the main lab, abridged next to Shuri's own personal.  
Bucky took a good look at him, both out of force of habit or worry. He was without any major injuries, a seemingly fresh cut on his arm but other than that, relatively unscathed. He breathed a quiet sigh of relief. "Steve."  
He looked up from the paper he was looking at, an odd familiarity leaking from it. Steve smiled, walking toward him.  
They gave each other an embrace. "Good to see back in one piece." He patted Steve on the back. "Too stubborn to die yet."  
"Obviously." He smirked, as he saw Nat coming down the stairs. "Glad you made it back."  
"Would've stayed if I could, didn't want to tip the Hand into what you were looking at."  
"So what is it?" Bucky said, walking toward the object, now in a sheer Wakandan wrapping used to accurately date and scan older documents. And as he walked up to it, his stomach felt as if it dropped a few stories.

It was the map from his memory.  
The almost hexagonal map was a deep brown from age, though the colors on it remained vibrant.  
Red, blue, yellow, green, purple and orange, flung across different sides of it and almost looked as if it was moving; a gold ribbon surrounded the outer sides, in between small, strange alien print he had never seen before. Like a mesh of Arabic and Hebrew. "James, what is i-" Natasha began to ask, before seeing it herself. "You found it."  
Steve nodded almost grimly. "The Hand apparently couldn't decipher it."  
"It's Asgardian." Bucky said, the words almost tumbling out of his mouth.  
Nat and Steve looked at him simultaneously. "Buck, how do you know?"  
And then it started coming back.

"...to up the dosage, Brody's coming to more often."  
Footsteps.  
"Looking at the map, Sergeant Barnes? As do I. It represents something the the Furher no longer believes in.. But Herr Schmidt, does." His vision swims as he sees Zola glance over at it. "(The Infinity Stones.)" He says in German, with an almost strange admiration.  
He's in Siberia. "-using my project-"  
"Which you willing gave over." Karpov says.  
Zola coughs violently into a white hankerchief, spots of red now showing. Even sickly, he shoots a menacing look at Karpov, who's standing straight, knowing he's coming out of this winning.  
"He would not be here without one of them. Without me." He puts emphasis on the last two words. "We are close. The Asgardians let more than we thought. There are things bigger than both you, and I. To think otherwise would be foolish."  
"The way I see it, Mother Russia remains undefeated because we chose not put stock in fairy tales. Unlike you, and your Red Skull."  
Zola cursed in German but his already small stature was made seemingly worse by whatever ailment he had.  
He passed by Bucky, looking at him up and down. "Do not forget your makers, Soldier." Zola's gaze went to his arm for a few moments, before cluctching his suitcase and leaving.

It feels like a day has passed, but it's only been a handful of seconds, which already seems like he was far too deep in, judging by the look on their faces.  
He blinked, taking longer breaths to shake off the memory. "Zola."  
And he knew, Steve would immediately understand, his gaze darkening at the mention. "...He knew."  
"He had this a replica back in the lab at Azzano. He came to Siberia years later and gave me Asgardian texts to learn. Karpov stopped it. ...Said they were fairy tales." Nat's look grew more worried as she tried to figure out the pieces.  
"Can you read this?" Steve asked, turning it carefully toward him.  
Bucky looked down at the paper, trying to make out anything. "Only a few words. ...Life." He pointed toward the red spot. "...Power.", at the purple, trying to make out anything. " 'Once joined, never parted.' ". His lips pursed slightly, something eerie in the sentence.  
The feeling spread throughout the room, with Steve now looking more worried. "Did Zola say what they were called?"  
"He called them infinity stones."

Shuri arrived in, looking a bit dishelved. "What is it, Captain Rogers?"  
"I'm sorry to bother, your Highness."  
She stopped in her tracks, taken by the paper. "...Is that..?"  
"We need help translating the full dialogue. It's in Asgardian, the computers won't translate it." Steve no sooner finishing his sentence, she picked up a flat glass square, rapidly typing in combinations.  
The computers made a soft whir, as it scanned itself again. "Asgardian is a different dialect of Latin scripture, if I can manipulate it to reconfigure against the text on Thor's ham- There."  
An English version popped up above it, as Shuri enlarged it.

It was a map. The stones now had names: Space, Power, Mind, Reality, Time and Soul.  
The stones names were followed by what appeared to be places: "Xandar", "Protean Galaxy" and "Knowhere", before their hearts stopped on the last three. "Earth".  
Steve and Bucky glanced at each other, their theory true. They had discussed what might be possible, Vision, and some man named Strange who could turn back time; the Tesseract sent back to Asgard. But the name wasn't here.  
"Someone's going after them." The sentence rang throughout the room, though it seemed Shuri was the one most paralyzed. The innocence in her face, suddenly showing against the mature grace she was endowed with.  
"It's true." She whispered to the air.  
"What is?" Nat asked.  
Shuri looked around the room, as if conflicting whether or not to divulge it. "When I was a young girl, the elders would tell a story to the heirs, and heirs alone. Of a star, falling to the Earth, and landing here. Our ancestors monitored it, afraid to move it.  
"After the first day, a field befitting Bast sprung around the hole where it was left. On the second, a waterfall formed in the caverns it created. It was called the Soul of our City."  
"Wakanda. It's built on an uncharted portion of the Namib."  
"No one has seen it since the 10th reign. That King came from a different tribe, and before he was usurped, it was said he took it from it's resting place and taken elsewhere."  
"Where is T'Challa?"  
Shuri became sterner, coming back to her own. "Away. Until then, I'm to tend to matters." She surveyed the map, cogs turning in her mind. "We must destroy this."  
"Your highness-"  
"If anyone was to find this, Wakanda would be decimated."  
"Whoever is hunting them is coming, and they know where they are."  
"How do you know this?"  
"Because the place where we left one of them is no longer on here." Nat said. "We left it on Asgard and the name isn't on here. The war's already started, we need to prepare. You need to warn-"  
"My people are already worried as it is. I cannot warn them on a theory."  
"It's not a theory." Bucky said grimly, looking at the main map. The word on one of the stones vanished once more. Wherever Xandar was, it was gone, the name now mirroring the other. Simply reading "Protean Galaxy".  
A moment of silence stretched into a week was interrupted by Shuri. "Do you know where the other two are?"  
"Yes." Steve said, still looking at the now changed spot.  
"Very well. You will bring them here."  
"Your-"  
"Wakanda is a fortress, Captain. Whomever is wielding these stones, has powers we cannot begin to predict. No one besides The throne, and those in this room even know of Wakanda's heart, I intend to keep it that way. We are not just fighting for Wakanda, Captain. We are fighting for the world. Let us show them the power of a soul." She turned to leave. "I will give you some of our best warriors to take with you on finding the other two. You will need help, Captain. Now is not the time to be modest. I must confer with the council." She sighed quietly, as she left. "And my King."


	4. I Glory In The Sight

Sam looks up at the stars from the broken and cracked cieling, reflecting back at him. When he was younger, it's what he dreamed of.  
His Mother telling him stories about Icarus, flying too close to the sun. Yet as he listened, all he could think of was a way to get closer. Even just by an inch.  
Wanda's red glow burst back into light as explosions happened.  
"Cover me!" Clint shouts as he dives to the right, taking out a HYDRA soldier as he fires an arrow into his knee. Sam flies overhead, diving as he shields Barton.  
And getting closer means feeling more of that fire.  
"I thought this was deserted!" Wanda shouts, now using her power to bind one soldier tight, dropping his fun as she throws him against the wall, nailing another.  
"It was, they just beat us here." A few more of Barton's arrows exploded, sending a shower of sparks and rock into the air.  
"Hey Tic-tac, tell me you got something!"

\+ Inside the Concrete +  
Dammit, dammit.... He has no idea what he's looking for.  
The giant, creepy looking wall definitely has a few pockets but one of them's empty and he can't find the other, running into a rat's maze ruin of dead ends and long hallways shaped from utter darkness and rock.  
"C'mon..." He mutters, before hitting another dead end.

Cap sent them out to what appeared to what appeared to all purposes be some ruin in Germany, with a cracked tomb out of a movie prop and something that looked like glowing cube thing Loki had a few years ago.   
For the past weeks in addition to dodging Tony Stark's dungeon patrol, they've been chasing dead ends with finding information about "infinity stones".  
"Ow." He hit another wall. "Hey, The Falcon? Need some help in where to go, this rock's doing something funny to my rada- What the hell?!" The entire Earth-rock whatever- quaked, like a giant explosion had just hit. "Guys?!"  
"We're good Lang, just focus on finding what you need!" Clint's voice came through the comms.  
"North 8 clicks, West 5!" Sam came through, albeit like it was coming out of a tin can.  
"Copy!" He began running toward Falcon's description.

There's a rush as he does, one that's been going on ever since this started. It's crazy, he's actually working with the Avengers, after being broken out of jail by Steve Rogers. Like, the Captain America. ....Well, part of the Avengers, but the cool ones for all he cared.  
He runs left.  
It's that, or focus on the stomach churn that comes with not being able to come home yet, chatting with Cassie through a secure video line. And that's always there.  
Got it.  
The object is a strange little box, the size of what he thinks is a metal tin from what the flickering light is showing.  
"Hey Tic-Tac, tell me you got something!"  
He shakes off the awe. "Yeah, yeah I got it!" He throws the shrink shurikens at it, minimizing it to his portable size as he tucks it into a secured pocket.  
This was going to hurt. "Alright, let's Hulk this."  
\+ +  
Lang erupts out of the wall, with the HYDRA soldiers now starting to retreat, their numbers smaller and things now coming out of the walls.  
"Sorry it took me a while, barely anything worked in there."  
"Nothing we couldn't handle." Clint fires an arrow behind his back without looking, getting a straggler perfect in the chest.  
Scott opens the helmet, taking out the object and putting it back to ordinary size. "This it?"  
Sam looks at it studingly. "Yeah, I think so."  
\---  
Sam and Scott take one of the Wakandan Stealth Jets, while Wanda makes her way to the other with Clint.  
He pats her on the shoulder as he limps his way in. "You get better every time, you know."  
She gives a little smile. "Thanks. I have a good teacher."  
He sits at the controls, calculating the trip back. "Who, me? Nah, that ain't good at all."  
She smirks again, sitting down.

As the clouds roll on, there's something she hasn't told anyone, and now knows is real.  
Ever since they started this search, there's a strange...energy that comes every time they're close to a stone, or a way to one. With Vision, it's different.  
She holds back a sigh. Then again, it's always different, this strange attraction that shouldn't be but is. Every time they're together, it feels like the world stops shifting, like she's with someone who understands a word without speaking. Wanda tucks the thought away in the better part of her heart. The other feeling though however... It's something like a magnet. This force that seems to gravitate toward her and she to it. It's how she's known the location was correct, and as they departed, the feeling went with Scott and Sam's jet.  
It's like they're talking to me, she thinks. And if she listens, there's one thing that they all say. "Things are going to change."

She finds her arms embracing her figure. And that frightens more than anything has in a while.


	5. As Darkness Takes The Day

He's been stewing in his hatred for as long a time as he could not count.

He sits, his legs not aching from the hours he's been sitting on them, a quiet stillness surrounding him. Like a sickly sweet aroma if it had been given scent, it sat heavy as vibranium around him.

He can feel the darkness surrounding him, growing in him. He's excelling where Kaecilius failed, he is not exploiting.  
He opens his eyes, looking down at his hand, glowing with the power that sorcerers like The Ancient One lied and deceived to her own needs. He is no longer a Sorcerer. He is Supreme.

A being appeared out of portal, Mordo stepped up, expecting a fight.  
The being appeared to be a woman, who was clothed in strange black robes that felt as if they were own skin, embracing her body in every pore. Her head from the forehead up was covered by a helmet, a strange feeling eminating from it.  
She bore a long spear and blue eyes that seemed to bear all the fire in the universe. "Baron Mordo." She stated, her voice a haunting tone that was neither high nor low.  
"Who wants to know?"  
"My Father. The Purger of Worlds."  
"And who is that?"  
Those eyes seemed to light up at the mere asking. "Death follows him like a shadow, he has no end. No beginning."  
He scoffed. "I don't believe in the eternal."  
"He is not Eternal. Nothing is. He is merely allowing the bill, to come due."  
Mordo froze.  
"He wants your prescence. To help him acquire what others cannot imagine. You know the location of one of the Earth's Infinity Stone's. It is in the hands of protection."  
"Why can your Father not retrieve it himself?"  
"Why does God himself not deal with the Earth's follies? He is saving himself for matters far beyond retrieval." Again, the voice seemed to wile itself into his bloodstream, coursing through his veins alongside the power he was setting free. He could detect no sorcery, just the justice he so longingly craved.  
"Who is your Father?"  
The woman's zeal let itself truly known with her smile; wicked and full of an energy that was her own. "Thanos."

And for the first time, he felt what true vengeance felt like. The same smile seeping into his own grin.


End file.
